I Carry Thee in My Heart
by Amor-deliria-nervosa-7491
Summary: We all know that Alex never stopped loving Lena, and we also know that Lena never stopped loving Alex. But what about Coral? What do we know about the girl who spent days with Alex, talking to him, laughing with him? We never know what happened, if she may have loved Alex at all. Did she? Or was there someone else who her heart belonged to?


Alex is one of the kindest people I've ever known. That's not saying much, considering my past, but he is so kind to me that I feel like I'm floating on a cloud every time we talk about something normal.

* * *

When I first gain consciousness after the fire, he is the first person I see. I see his face, his dull golden eyes staring down at me. I see him mouthing something. I can't tell what it is, but he stops when I first crack open my eyes. It must have been a prayer or some shit like that, waiting for me to wake up.

"Hey there," he says gently. "You're safe now," he looks next to me. I can only look straight ahead, up at him, so I can't see what he's staring at, but I can guess. Whatever put that longing, passionate look in his eyes must be the object of his desire. Someone he loves deeply. Maybe he did, at one time, but the feeling from her is gone, and he is trying to win her back.

"Who are you?" I croak, my voice barely above a whisper, sounding like a frog being choked, if it could talk.

Alex looks at me again, and the look in his eyes—one of desire, one of _love_—disappears. His eyes harden themselves into a welcoming look. That looks familiar. It's like something sweet, like a s'more. It can taste good at first, but too many and then you start to feel sick. I take a note to be careful around Alex.

It's not like I would like him at all. Not after what happened with…Asher. Asher was this boy I'd known ever since I came to the Wilds. He was handsome, just like Alex is, I guess, but he was different. He was explosive and dangerous and people avoided him at all costs.

I guess there was this part of me that wanted to fix him, to make him whole and pure.

Anyways, our homestead traveled together and he was always following in the back.

People knew better than to give him a gun.

So I talked to him. They always said it was dangerous that I, such a fragile little thing, would be talking to him, a dangerous person who might wrap his thick, big hands around my neck and suck the life out of me.

The best part was: I didn't care. That was what the _deliria_ did to me. It didn't make me think clearly. It didn't make me think that Asher was extremely dangerous, or that he might harm me. It didn't insert thoughts of self-preservation into my mind.

Rather, it implanted thoughts of shaping Asher into a whole, good person. I knew he must have been. I knew he must have been pure before. Kind, funny, and different than he had been at the time.

Until one day it was him to approach me. It was him who walked up to me, and not me to him to strike up conversation. At that point, people had picked up my obvious crush on Asher and had started buzzing about it. I had no doubt in my mind that Asher knew about it, and he either didn't care or liked the attention or the feeling was mutual.

The day he walked over, I felt like all the blood was draining from my body. Like I was melting under his gaze, becoming a different person. One who now had someone to love, and was loved.

"Coral," he said in his deep, low voice. "I need to ask you something,"

Trembling, I bursted out, "What is it?" he gave me a strange look before continuing on.

"Come into the clearing nearby tonight. I'll tell you then." then he walked away without another word.

Confused, the rest of the day had been a blur to me. The next thing I remembered was climbing out of my sleeping bag, slipping on the running shoes that were too big on my feet, and they kept on sliding off my feet. I just remember running towards the clearing, slipping my thin body, shrunken by the few days in the Wilds and undernourishment, through the densely packed but thin trees in the small wood that separated the clearing from where we had settled for the night.

"Coral," a voice said behind me. "You're here. I didn't think you'd come." his sour breath and uneven gait tells me: he's drunk.

"I'm stronger than you think," I squeaked. He just laughed, a harsh, cold, cruel laugh that bore down on my face and forced me to take a step back to avoid it.

"Alright," he said. He lifted up a bottle in his hand I had not seen and put it to his lips, chugging. He stopped after a while, licking his lips, frowning. "Ah, damn," he said, peering inside the bottle and frowning. "I'm all out."

"Please stop," I said quietly. I was so scared of him at that moment. I really saw him for the first time that night. What the others said he became when he was true, real.

Whether Asher heard me or not, he didn't give any indication of caring. He tossed the bottle aside on the floor and grabbed the back of my neck. I could feel my throat seize up with fear, and suddenly I was having trouble breathing. He leaned in and tried to kiss me on the lips.

I should've been thrilled that Asher was kissing me. I should've been forcing my lips against his. Instead I was repulsed. I threw him aside and backed up against a tree that was thicker than the rest, rougher. Asher laughed again. I was repulsed he was trying to kiss me in a drunken state. It wouldn't be real. I wanted a kiss with him to be real.

Of course, he wouldn't have been the first boy I would've kissed. I'd kissed many boys, but it hadn't been real with any of them. The feelings I felt toward Asher were real, more real than anything I'd ever felt for any other boy. It was one of those times I felt at my strongest point, when I felt that the zombies were at a loss to fight me. Because I was too strongly in love nothing could turn me back. It was when I was sure that everyone else felt shorter, weaker than me, because I could love better than they could.

But at that moment, I felt small. I felt weak. And I was scared. I turned my head away so Asher couldn't kiss me. "Asher," I whispered. "Stop."

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Asher frown. "Alright then. Straight to business." he tossed me over his shoulder and I shrieked. His arm started to bear down on me, then stopped.

"Let me go!" I raised my fists and started to pound against Asher's strong, sturdy back. He did. He tossed me onto the ground in the clearing.

"Get up," Asher said quietly. I did. He tossed me something that glinted in the moonlight. It was cold and metal and hard. A gun. "I want you to fire it." So I did. I swiveled around, away from Asher, and pulled the trigger. A bang ensued and I heard a crack. I must have hit one of the trees. "This is good," Asher murmured. "She has good aim.

"Now turn around, face me, and fire," Dumbly, blindly, I did it. I turned around and almost pulled the trigger before I realized what he wanted me to do.

"Asher, no!"

"Goddamit, Coral," he said. "Shoot me," he said. "Shoot me in the head, the chest. Just do it. You just have to trust me."

"I won't." I said defiantly.

"Why?"

I used the last defense I had. "Because I love you!"

"Then if you want me to be happy, shoot me."

To that, I had no answer. This was it. I put my finger over the trigger. I wanted to do something. Something that my cousin, Kalin, used to do when he was about to kill someone. _Any last words_, he'd say venomously. I used to think that he was showing them mercy. But now I know he was being terrible. He's letting them know their death is definite and soon.

But for Asher, he already knew that.

With my finger poised over the trigger, I said to Asher, "Any last words?"

He took a deep breath before saying, "I love you." And then I remember squeezing. How hard it was to get the gun to fire. I remember hesitating, then what he said about his happiness, and how if I loved him, then I should let him have his happiness.

Asher stumbled over. I'd hit him in the chest, but he didn't die immediately. I heard people starting to run towards the clearing. The sound must have gotten to them. "Asher." I said, pressing my lips lightly to his. "Please. I love you. Stay with me."

He gripped my hand tightly. "Coral. Don't do it. Don't love anyone else. Know I love you. I always will." He smiled, brushed my cheek with his fingertips, and then the light left his eyes.

Quil, one of the leaders of the homestead of that time, was at my side immediately after Asher's eyes went glassy. "Dead?" he asked, and I nodded.

And it was then that I knew that I couldn't love anyone else.

* * *

I don't remember much after that. I remember sitting by the fire, discussing where to go when and what they would do. Or we, as Alex insisted. "You're a part of us now," he says, smiling, but his eyes are glassy. His eyes flick to someone behind me. I turn around.

That someone is a girl. I can't for the life of me remember her name, but that's probably because her face isn't that memorable. Her eyes are a muddle, not green or brown, but they're still pretty. Her hair is so long it is almost past her waist. Her face is pale, just dotted so faintly with freckles.

But she is sitting with another boy. That is what sets Alex's mouth at a hard line, what puts his teeth on edge and his voice dangerous, like it's about to explode in anger.

He must have loved her, and she must have loved him. Raven gave me a really bad explanation of what happened to her and Alex earlier. Apparently, she comes from Zombieland. She and Alex fell in love. They escaped before her cure. Well, she did. Alex got shot, thrown into the Crypts—Portland's version of prison, I guess—and she met this other guy. And now Alex escaped and found out she found someone else.

He is so like Asher I shiver.

That is why I couldn't love him.

My first instincts aren't to love him at all, simply because of what happened with Asher. I want to be whole, to love someone, but it feels like a betrayal to Asher's memory if I do. So I don't.

But I want to find out about the girl.

"That girl," I say, pointing to the girl. "What's her name?" Alex spits on the ground. He doesn't say anything for a few heartbeats.

"Lena," he says. I notice he says it without emotion. This, I know, is worse than if he had talked about her bitterly. It means that she's nothing to him now. It is worse, much worse than if he hated her.

I don't say anything else.

I can't tell him of my past now, how it felt to pull the trigger, and kill someone, now that he can't tell me of his.

* * *

The next day, when we're walking, I notice that Alex is taking extra pains to talk to me. He has warmed up. He has told me of his history, his past. He doesn't talk about Lena, but I get the feeling he wants to. I tell him of my life before, and he bursts out laughing. It was about Kalin's little brother, Paul.

I notice Lena beginning to turn her head around to look at us, and quickly I look at Alex and notice he is staring at me. He is smiling, but his eyes are sad. They are sad in the kind of way that only someone could tell if they were standing right next to him. Out of the corner of my eyes, I see Lena's face alight with fury, and I know it's because I'm simply looking at Alex, nothing else.

She is the only one that should be looking at him, smiling, watching his face light up and fall in love with him again. Except I don't love him. They love each other.

"I know what you want to talk about," Alex says quietly. He looks down, at the ground. I don't look at him. I know it's painful for him to talk of any of his experiences, so I usually don't pry, but now that he knows I want to talk about it, there's something I need to ask him.

"C'mon," I say softly, touching his arm lightly. "You can tell me anything," Alex looks at me. He sighs.

"I met Lena when she was in Portland. She was…afraid of falling in love, at first." he grimaces. I want to put an arm around his shoulders, but I don't. "Then when she went to warn an underground illegal party on a raid night to leave, they were raided. A raider…he had a dog and he followed Lena. The dog bit Lena, real hard, and just as the raider was about to swing at her head, I pulled her out of the way. I led her outside, to a shed, where I wrapped her leg up…and…" Alex takes a deep deep breath. "I convinced her that she can either be happy as a cured, or happy and free and in love with me, as an uncured. We kissed.

"Then, we started to spend so much time together, and her procedure was coming up, and we just…we didn't want her to get cured, so we planned to escape to the Wilds a week before the procedure. But then…she got caught trying to meet up with me.

"After two days, her friend Hana got a message to me that she would be able to escape. So I went to her house, and we escaped all the way to the fence. She was able to climb over, but…I got shot. I wasn't thinking clearly. All I was thinking was of making sure Lena was okay, that she got over the fence, that I got shot because I wasn't climbing myself.

"So I got dragged to the Crypts. They locked me away, but I healed. I won't tell you how I escaped or how I found her. All I knew was that when I found her here with that…" Alex spits on the ground, "Bastard, it was like nothing had mattered."

I take in a deep breath. This is a lot to take in at once. The story is just…it's too tragic. What Lena and Alex had was real. And then when she left him for Julian…I know how she feels. She must've thought he was dead.

"She still loves you," I say softly. "I know she does."

Alex spits on the ground again.

"So you don't love her anymore?" Alex looks at the back of Lena's head. He's mouthing something, I realize it's the same thing he's mouthing when I first gained consciousness. _Lena, Lena, Lena_.

Alex shakes his head just as Lena turns to look at us. I see her eyes flick from me to Alex and back again, and her eyes narrow.

"She still loves me? Bullshit," Alex spits on the ground again.

"But you still love her, right?"

"I never stopped loving her. She was the one who saved me."

"She still loves you. I've seen the way you look at her, and the way she looks at you. You just…" I can think of nothing else to say. "You just have to trust me." I feel like Asher now. A suicidal boy, who loved a girl, and wanted her to just trust him enough to let her kill him. So it wouldn't be marked as suicide. And now that same girl is asking a boy who desperately loves another girl, and wants nothing more than her to be in love with him. Similar stories, different endings. I lean my head against Alex's shoulder, and he tenses up.

"You just have to trust me," I repeat. "You love each other."

"I love you, Lena," Alex mutters under his breath.

I know in my heart and my soul, that Lena still loves Alex.

And I also know, just then, that Lena is saying under her breath, at the same time he is, _I love you, Alex_.

**A/N: I just love Delirium and I was reading Requiem yet again and I was reading that part when they're walking from the place where they found Coral and Lena looks back at her and Alex talking, and Alex shakes his head in response to Coral's question, and I just knew that he was saying, "I still love her. I never stopped." Lena and Alex are the best. So, yeah.**

**Leave a review if you feel like it :)**


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